


A Tale of Two Sisters

by Veringue



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Coming of Age, Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mythology References, Sister-Sister Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-18
Updated: 2015-12-18
Packaged: 2018-05-07 10:55:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5454089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Veringue/pseuds/Veringue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"There are three little girls sitting on the white steps of the temple ruins. There are three pairs of feet in polished shoes, three sets of ten fingers, and three different souls. Two of them have hair as dark as night. The other is different." Mary and Sybil throughout the years, twenty-four years of darling Sybil's company, and the final chapter to their story. [Written in October 2012, after 3x05 aired.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Tale of Two Sisters

**Author's Note:**

> [I wrote this in October 2012, after the devastating 3x05 broke my young heart. I first posted it elsewhere, but am now posting it here since I joined AO3. So, all these author's notes are directly from my far younger self to you. Hope you like it!]
> 
> Hello, dearest reader!
> 
> I had so, so many feelings for 3x05 that I couldn't help but write a little something about it! So, here we are. There are so many conflicting emotions involved in this that I hope I've managed to capture them properly.
> 
> If you're interested in becoming very upset, the soundtrack to this is 'The Weight of Us' by Sanders Bohlke. You can put it on 'infinitelooper', sit back, relax, and hopefully enjoy!
> 
> Thank you for reading!

_“Remember me, remember me, but ah! forget my fate.”_

_– Dido’s Lament, Henry Purcell_

_July 1901_

There are three little girls sitting on the white steps of the temple ruins. There is a cool wind tracing a track between the three of them, three young girls. There are three pairs of feet in polished shoes, three sets of ten fingers, and three different souls. Two of them have hair as dark as night. The other is different. The eldest patiently watches over the youngest, the tiny hands, the tiny feet, the big eyes, the braided hair. That is her duty, watching, guarding.

“He loved her very much,” she says firmly, “but he had to go and make a new city.” She watches as Sybil’s fingers fiddle with the pebbles, trying to pile them on top of one another, but they keep tumbling over. “Just like you build cities, and like home is Papa’s city.”

“Why?” Sybil asks without looking up.

“Because it was his duty, bestowed upon him by the gods.” Mary’s fingers trace the aged lines of the book, the wrinkles in the pages. “That’s what it says here.”

“And Queen went with him?” Sybil asks. The brown eyes meet her own. “Like Mamma went with Papa?”

“No–” Mary begins.

“Yes,” Edith cuts in, putting aside her diary, filled with childish handwriting, “yes, she does, and they live happily ever after.”

“No, they do not!” Mary snaps. “He leaves her behind and she kills herself!”

Promptly, Sybil bursts into tears and the trees seem to dip in the wind, bowing their heads, mourning in the silver sunlight.

“Why did you have to say that?” Edith asks desperately, Sybil’s cries echoing out over the lawn. “I was only trying to help!”

“Well, I didn’t know she’d cry! I didn’t cry!”

“I cried!”

“Yes, but _you’re_ a ninny!”

Edith swallows, face turning bright red, tiny hands clenched in fists. “Then _you_ can tell Mamma why she’s crying again!” Edith collects her things, gets to her feet and stomps off, her figure shaking violently by the time she reaches the bushes.

As soon as Edith is out of sight Mary crawls down the steps to where Sybil sits and gathers her little sister up, presses her dry cheek to her wet one, takes her small body in her long arms. “I’m sorry,” she whispers, “but it’s all right. It never happened.”

Sybil lets out a small sound that makes her think of a nursery with sky blue wallpaper and a crib rocking of its own accord and a baby so small it’s hard to believe that it will grow up to become someone. Sybil twists to look at her with a face so sorrowful that it wrenches her heart. It’s ridiculous. It’s just a story. She brushes the dark hair away from the little girl’s face.

Sybil chokes back tears. “People don’t kill herselves?”

“Themselves,” she corrects. “And I don’t know. But the Queen never did, because the story never happened.”

“I don’t like it.”

“No, I know,” she says, “but it never happened. It’s a story to make sure it never happens, to tell Queens not to love men who have to build cities,” she finishes wisely.

Sybil sits up and she moves her jaw a bit, tasting the words, her mind running wild. “But but but...Papa builded a city, right?” She finds her sister’s face. “He builded a city with Mamma and with us and with Nanna and Carsey and green trees and the temple.” Her eyes flick up to the ruined building. “And they had no trouble.”

Mary laughs lightly, her arms winding more tightly around her sister’s shoulders. She always smiles when little Sybil talks like that. “But Papa is smart and he built his city before he went to find Mamma. He built it so that they could live there together.”

And Sybil smiles too and takes her sister’s hands and kisses them with her child’s lips.

“Do you want a different story?” Mary asks, pushing _The Aeneid_ off her lap. Perhaps it was a bit of a long shot in the end, reading classical literature to a five-year-old. She herself is ten, after all, and understands everything much better. 

“Change it first?” Sybil says against her sister’s shoulder.

“Change the story?” She raises her eyebrows. “That’s a good idea!”

Sybil looks up again. “You cried, too?”

Mary freezes for a moment, then nods. Sybil has always been so empathetic, ever since she could talk and smile; and now, at the age of five, it has only gotten worse. At first, she had thought that it was a matter of a five-year-old’s instinct, which, in part, of course it was, but it was also just Sybil, Sybil and her tender soul. “I did,” she admits. She would not have admitted it to anyone else.

Sybil raises her small hand to Mary’s cheek. With a tiny finger she transfers a kiss from her own lips to those of her sister. “We’ll be all right.”

“Yes,” Mary replies. “Yes, and so will Queen Dido,” she continues determinedly. “He comes back for her and they live in Rome in a big house with blue curtains and walls like in your room and they’ll have–”

“Three princesses,” Sybil finishes.

Mary laughs. “Yes, three princesses. They’ll have three princesses.”

Suddenly, Sybil is serious, as serious as a young soul can be, and when she looks at her sister, she looks into the eyes of a young Dido. “Don’t die.” Her voice is still that of a child, but low, low and earnest, and her face is filled with hope. She speaks as though she already knows exactly what her words mean.

 _So young and yet so old._ “No,” says Mary and pulls Sybil to her as the sun comes out to warm their backs. “Nobody dies.” 

* * *

_September 1906_

It is their own little thing for a long time – Rome, and Dido and Aeneas’s house with the blue curtains. And even once Sybil can read the story herself and has made the library her own ground, and even once she is old and wise and brave enough to acknowledge Dido’s fate, she chooses to forget it.

“They have to have a room like this one,” Sybil says from her place in Papa’s big red armchair, legs tucked under her, books spread out on her lap. The candle to her side flickers when she raises her arms and stretches.

Her sister stands in front of the window, young yet old, transparent yet cold. And Sybil knows that it has begun. She knew it would begin sometime. Still, she is relieved when she sees her sister smile in the reflection of the darkened glass. She always smiles when little Sybil talks like that. “Of course,” Mary answers without turning, “a room like every one in this house.”

“Not very Roman,” Sybil says, “but it doesn’t matter because we can do what we want.” She turns a page of the book with the utmost care.

“True.” Mary walks to the other armchair and throws herself in it – no perfect posture, eyes already closing. “When we’re twenty,” she says to the blackness, “we’re going to Rome, darling, we’ll go and we’ll see for ourselves. And afterwards Paris.”

She can hear Sybil laugh, a sound that starts in the back of her mind and circles forward until she can hear every pitch and tone and chord. It makes her smile again. “We won’t ever both be twenty at the same time,” says Sybil.

“Well then the day I’m twenty and you’re my age, we’re going.” She yawns. “As long as we’re old enough for them to take us seriously.” 

“Which is never.”

Mary opens her eyes again and looks at her little sister. “When did you become such a pessimist, darling?” she says fondly. “Don’t start that now. There are enough pessimists here as it is.”

The thunder flings itself at the windows, followed immediately by a fiery crack of yellow that sharpens the nightly world for a mere second. Sybil flinches, digging her nails into the pages of the book, and her sister crawls from one chair to the other and they sit together.

“Somebody’s angry tonight,” Mary murmurs.

Sybil groans as they twist together, dressing gowns and black braids and fast heartbeats. “I don’t believe in God,” she says. “You know I don’t.”

“No, I know. But this is different. This is Jupiter.”

“Zeus.”

“Not very Roman,” Mary returns, and Sybil laughs herself to sleep. _Sweet girl, sweet, sweet girl._

* * *

_January 1911_

This is towards the end of what she knows as the Greek period, talking of furious love affairs and warrior women who don’t kill themselves, who don’t beg their lovers to forget their fates but who create their own fates. _Women may be entrapped, may need to be saved, but they inspire, they create,_ she writes on a little note. They had agreed that it would be more exciting to exchange notes – the Greek letter-posting period. She laughs.

 _They want me to marry Patrick,_ she writes.

“But they can’t make you do something you don’t want!” Sybil cries, her evening gown liquid black, the colour of her hair.

“It’s not for a while. Don’t worry.” She slips hand into glove, puts glove to neck, perfume to neck, perfume behind ear. She checks herself in the mirror; then turns around. “And it may not be ideal but it’s what they want, and maybe it’s what I want as well. It’s all right, darling.” 

Sybil looks away and raises a hand to her forehead as if to shield herself from the glare of the sun. “ _Marry_ Patrick? But he’s our friend! How can you marry him if he’s our friend and not...” She trails off. She doesn’t know what she wanted to say.

But her sister knows. “People don’t really distinguish between friends and lovers anymore and, frankly, it doesn’t matter. He will have Downton, and I will have Downton, and when he asks, I will say yes.” 

Sybil stares at her sister. Her words are almost inaudible: “I think Edith likes him...”

“I know,” is all Mary says.

Sybil covers her face with her hands and when she uncovers herself again she’s almost unrecognizable, almost a stranger. “Who are you, Mary?! What about your Perseus and our trips to Rome and–”

“None of it exists, darling. None of it is going to happen.” The room seems to be darkening ever so slowly and all of a sudden her corset feels very tight – perfect posture. “Remember what I told you all those years ago: none of it exists, so then I’d rather focus on what does exist instead of living in a dream.”

 _Don’t become like me,_ she writes later that night. _You’re a darling._

 _So are you,_ Sybil writes back, _and don’t pretend you’re not._

But she has no choice. She knows she does not. Mary loses half of her heart when her doubts are confirmed and Patrick’s intentions and her family’s designs start to seep into her life. Gradually, she becomes aware of what her future is to be like, and she knows that it is too late. Then she throws the other half away when the RMS _Titanic_ sinks. She has no need for it now. 

* * *

_May 1912_

“Sybil, don’t cry, look at me. It’s all right.” _She’s so young, she ought not to cry, she doesn’t know what sorrow is, how could she know?_

The temple ruins loom above them dark and overshadowing, a cloud hides the sun, and where summer should be peering over the horizon, they see only the remnants of winter and a dreary spring; they see only time passing.

Sybil laughs through her tears. “Oh Mary, you’ve told me that so many times, and I try, I really do. But what is to become of me, of us, of women like us?”

Mary sits down next to her, hands folded in her lap, and she remembers _The Aeneid_ spread out on the skirts of a flowery dress, and she remembers changing a story. It all comes back to her and drenches her in a cold world. Like the temple, it hovers over them, a temple to non-existent gods. 

She puts her arm around Sybil’s shoulders. “Your season was a great success. Mamma said so. Why are you sad?”

“What is the point,” Sybil gasps, “if I am to be auctioned off, if I am to have no say in the matter? You were right, Mary.” She shivers. “I should’ve seen the truth when you did.” 

“No,” Mary says, “you saw it before me, you did, darling, and that is your burden.”

“And we can’t create our own fate...?” Sybil asks, as if still hoping that the answer might be something different, as if that which is already determined can be changed.

“No,” Mary says again, “we cannot. Not for now, at least, not for a while to come. We have to be patient and wait, like Penelope–”

“Mary, don’t.” It takes all Sybil’s energy to come to these ruins, not to build them up, but to watch them fall. “We don’t know what we’re waiting for. What if it never comes? We have so much and yet so little. And what is the point if we have no voice?”

“The point is,” Mary says firmly, “that we live. How we live is of no significance.”

“But that is no way to live!” The wind blows strands of Sybil’s hair skywards. She wraps her arms around her body and leans towards her sister. The clouds are greying, but it doesn’t look like rain, it looks like hopelessness. “That is no way to live...” she breathes. “Then I had rather live on false illusions.”

“I wouldn’t be one to hold you back, Sybil darling.”

Sybil looks up and finds Mary’s eyes again, eyes like hers. She reaches for her sister’s cheek but the sun does not break through. “We’ll be all right.”

“Yes, we will.” Mary’s hand is cold in her sister’s.

When night falls they are spread out on the steps. Blankets have been brought, trays have been brought. It did not rain, but the sun did not shine either. Only the occasional visit of Mr Carson with his deep voice and good manners brings them news from the other world. Now the sky, once blue, is sprinkled with silver and darkest black and, for one night, they forget their age and their time, for one night they live on false illusions, age-old constellations, and the tale of two sisters again. And they laugh until someone carries them back inside. They don’t know who, but they have their suspicions.

_One bed, two sisters._

* * *

  _June 1920_

There is one young woman sitting on the white steps of the temple ruins. Her hair is black and her clothes are black. She sits with her hands folded in her lap and looks out over the dancing grasses and the swaying leaves. She sees three little girls who, when they were young, did not fight together yet, who, with tiny feet and tiny hands, clutched onto each other for the dear hope of life.

It is June and yet the summer has not come. She feels only the frost and biting wind of a harsh season. There’s a little girl sitting beside her. She sees two feet in white polished shoes with thick black soles. She sees Edith writing; she sees Sybil playing; she sees three little girls with their lives spread out before them. She sees the age-old parchment of life, clean yet brown, sewn together by their predecessors, laid out for the young to walk upon with muddy feet, for the young to press muddy fingers upon, for the young to cherish and love.

Under Sybil’s small knees something catches her eye. When she reaches out, Sybil is gone but the paper remains. It’s the corner of a page. And even after all these years she knows that it is a page from the last chapter of _The Aeneid_ , the final chapter.

For a moment the world goes dark around her, the temple reeling above her head, the steps coming to take her in, the water flowing up through the grass, and the ground folds up on itself – like a puppet show, just after closing time. And she leans to one side, black glove to hand, hand to forehead, head to shoulder, shoulders to knees. They lost so much time, all of them, every single one of them, years and years of wasted time... 

But she does not break. She has a better idea than to cry on the stony steps of a false illusion. They cried too often here together for her to be able to cry here alone. It may be a temple to non-existent gods; it is still sacred.

She stands and walks and runs and goes into the house where everything is dark and where all who walk and talk and breathe are hollow shells of what they used to be. She sees them, washed up on the beach, the water reaching ever closer, the moon rising ever higher, disappearing into black. The sun is gone now and the night presses itself upon her, upon them, all of them, and it is starless and desolate. She’s cold, she realises. She can feel the space between her clothing and her skin. And there’s no one to take it away.

She’s still walking, aware of the fact that she is lifelessly alive, aware of everything but the pain inside her head, denying the fact that it _hurts,_ denying the undeniable. There’s a pin lying on the patterned carpet, she notices, a pin lying on the carpet where three little girls once played. “Be careful,” she whispers. “Don’t cut yourself on it.” 

She goes through the grand hall, where the eldest taught the youngest to walk, taught her to dance, where the middle sister learned she liked to play the piano. She goes through the library, where two sisters travelled to Rome, spun elaborate tales, fought against merciless serpents, and hid from the wrath of the gods. She goes through halls tread by tiny feet and tiny hands, echoing with wails and laughter.

And she finds peace only when she reaches the one room that is warm and sky blue. Even before she enters, she thinks: _There is a sun here, and stars, and a moon, and soft cotton clouds..._

“Hello, Sybil darling,” she says.

The crib rocks of its own accord. She pauses. She’s small now, barely tall enough to look over the side, to lean over, to look at such a peaceful child, at such a quiet child. She’s small again and hopping down the stairs and finding Mr Carson to tell him that she wants to run away, that she wants to be alone.

Little forks of silver, she holds in her hands, little slivers of mobile hope, of a harmless adventure. Because that is the best kind of adventure.

She presses a finger to her lips and gives her love to the child, the tiny hands, the tiny feet, the black eyes, the black hair, all of it, every single bit of it. Of course it’s Sybil who ran away to create her own fate, she thinks, who ran away as she herself had never dared to do. But the little girl’s back now, back where she belongs. And Mary, who always thought she wanted to be alone, only now realises that that is the last thing she has ever wanted.

“Darling,” she says, “I’m going to read to you from _The Aeneid_ and you have to listen very, very closely. It’s very important that you listen very, very closely, because I’m going to read it only once.”

She sits down and opens the book and knows that by the time she gets to the final chapter there will be a corner of a page missing.

 _Arms, and the man I sing, who, forc'd by fate,_  
_And haughty Juno's unrelenting hate,_  
_Expell'd and exil'd, left the Trojan shore._  
_Long labors, both by sea and land, he bore,_  
_And in the doubtful war, before he won_  
_The Latian realm, and built the destin'd town;_  
_His banish'd gods restor'd to rites divine,_  
_And settled sure succession in his line,_  
_From whence the race of Alban fathers come,  
_ _And the long glories of majestic Rome._

When she raises her eyes again she sees two men in the room, young men, young yet old. She did not even hear them enter, and yet there they are.

She remembers now how she cast her heart away long ago, because the truth was so hard to bear that she had rather not bear it at all. And she remembers how one of those young men came along and searched every house and every field and every creek of England to piece her back together. She remembers that she has long meant to ask him whether he has found all of her yet, but now she knows that he has not and that he cannot ever.

It has been five days, ten hours, thirty-three minutes, and twenty-four years since...she knows not what. She sees only a little girl with blue ribbons, a little girl in an evening gown, a little girl helping the wounded, a little girl on the arm of her loved one, a child sleeping in her arms.

“Don’t hurt her,” says Mamma.

“No,” she says, “not ever.”

She sighs and watches the baby’s hands reaching for the heavens. _We should have stayed young together, darling,_ she thinks. _We should have gone away together, seen the world together, Paris, Rome, Africa, the azure seas... We should have never grown up._ She looks at the child’s face, its little slide of a nose. _We tried too hard, my darling._

In the end, she looks back to them again: the man who’s Sybil and the man who’s her, sleeping, no, breathing in silence, sitting in rocking chairs by the child who is both them and her and a part of each and every single soul in this house.

She sees it now, a circle between them, the pebbles by the pond, little hands replacing each one that tumbles until a balance is found. And from everything they lose, she sees that they gain something. Troy falls, but Penelope ends her wait; Dido dies, but Rome is built. That way, nothing ever goes to waste, and nobody ever truly dies. And that is what makes the sorrow bearable. 

She has stopped reading, the child croons of sweet dreams, and the man, the tireless man, the searcher, he opens his eyes. They are blue as the sky. 

He nods and smiles, and she meets his gaze. “It’s all right,” she sees him say, and she knows that although it is a lie, it is the truth as well. Because that is the only way the truth can be faced. 

It will all come, Mary knows, all in good time, the tears will come, the joy will come, life will come, death will come, but for now she smiles as Sybil would have smiled. Instead of crying over a false ending, she smiles at the memories, smiles as she counts her blessings, and smiles as she turns the page. 

_Thank you, Sybil darling. Thank you for this story._

**Author's Note:**

> It might be fun to know that, in 'The Aeneid', Dido's relationship with her sister, Anna, is also of key importance, and that Aeneas (after leaving Dido) ultimately ends up marrying a young lady called Lavinia. I thought those were nice links as well. But basically I just have a lot of Dido and Downton feelings! (: Thank you, again, for reading!


End file.
